Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Help!! Salmon smoking

My Alder came in to day from a gracious forum member. May smoke meat on the 4th. This 100 degree + ain't conducive to this, but I think the Lady said I would need to enjoy it.

What ever you do, give us the name of the degenerate bastard that would sully the good works of this forum!!!!!!!!!!!!

In all seriousness, if pak says something about smoking, especially cold-smoking (but not limited to) you should be taking notes...

Now, since I no longer own a hatchet or axe, I guess I can quarter each of the very nice short pieces of Alder with my table saw?? I will peel it at that time.

Be careful! Round stuff on a tablesaw is usually a bad plan!

I'm curious as to why dry the alder. I understand the bark, had never known that about the bark but thats easy.

If we dry wood here, and put it on coals it burns. Have to damp it or such.

When we smoke various things we go cut green wood as we need it, put it on top of charcoal and it controls itself and really puts out the smoke.

Thin blue smoke is far better than billowing gray smoke. Run your smoke through a furnace filter (cold smoking obviously) and you will see the difference. Damp your dry wood a bit (reduce air to it) to get it to smolder rather than burn and you will see a big difference, too.

Since I plan on smoking on the 4th, part of it will be green without the bark. I usually use pecan that I put in a bucket of water about an hour before putting it in the smoker. I am a real rookie doing this.

Art, thank you for the kind words and endorsement. A couple of comments about alder. I don't peel the bark from the alder and have never noticed a metallic taste from alder. I do not discount it though. Lott is a detail guy by personality and profession. I may out of practice mitigate it by using a filter in the smokehouse, as described by Art. Additionally, after smoking salmon strips, cheese, butter etc. I will rub the darker smoke accumulation from the product with a soft terry cloth. This along with the filters removes most of the tars and bitter taste from the product, in my observation. Enjoy it, smoking is fun!

Geez, you guys are serious about this. Brought up as I was I ate everything that was called food. My Dad wanted round steak cooked in the frying pan until the inside was black and tough as old leather. Veges were always pinto beans and mashed potatoes. Sunday was a well done pot roast and Saturday was fried chicken. Chickens were small in those days and one fed a family of 6. We each had a particular piece that was ours. I was lucky, I got one thigh. We did have chipped beef and gravy a couple times a week.

Did I get a wake up after getting married. I had never heard of mushrooms, eggplant, peas, rare steak,and a multitude of different things that were actually cooked with spices.

😁

You mean some of you are talking about something you can’t actually asphyxiate yourself inside of? 🧐

As for damp wood: sap damp = bad; dried, rewet/moistened = good; any bark, conifer, rotten = no good. (Punky = okay if good species.). You gots to know your driftwoods.

Butch,
HaHa sounds like my family. Growing up in Ak in the 50s and 60s meant powdered milk, canned everything and a watermelon once a year. we weren't poor but the quality of produce going to Ak was not very consistent. My Mom had a schedule of meals through the week also. Feeding boys meant quantity not quality. We had moose, caribou and lots of salmon, of course, but the salmon was never grilled but cooked in tin foil in the oven and the game meat was always dry and over cooked. I'm no chef but I can cook and I never use any of my Mom's favorite recipes.

Very interesting. I'm not sure what cold and hot smoke are. I have never smoked a fish but hope to learn soon enough.

What we do here is generally smoking fresh sausage around 600 links or so in a sealed smoke house. Put hot coals in and green wood on top and its full of gray looking smoke shortly and it is still full of that or leaning a bit brown smoke by the next morning some 15 hours or so later.

At that point we pull fresh sausage to freeze and then leave the rest to end up with dry sausage and never hit with smoke again.

I'm going to assume this is cold smoking.

From 1953-1956 my Dad was stationed at Ladd Air Force Base in Fairbanks. I know about the powdered milk, but the other food items fit my Dad's appetite. No local game or fish for us. I never complained as I was grateful for what I had. Now, at 12 years old I delivered the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Man, I could afford Cokes and candy!
We got our first TV in 1955 and even enjoyed watching test pattern. Seems TV came on at 8AM and at 10PM they played the National Anthem and closed it out for the day.
We really had it good.

Hot smoking is "kippering" and temps run up to 140F for the product though a bunch of commercial operations go hotter, some for speed and efficiency and some just because they do not mind putting out mediocre product.

Cold smoking uses as little heat as possible to get smoke onto food. Jerky, should be dried rather than cooked and cold smoked salmon is very much like jerky. The smoke source is usually some distance from the smoker and the smoke is ducted to the box.

Cheese is pretty easy to kipper, but a real mess to clean up!

I've done one batch of kings so far in a big chief. The thinner pieces were in it for 24hrs and the thicker pieces took 36hrs to finish. 2 pans of apple chips. I have it set on my back porch and it gets pretty windy which keeps the temps down. I finished it on wed and its gone already (4 medium sized kings). Guess I better go get a few more. I forgot to take pictures of the finished product, will try to remember next time.

We always talked about putting one of our old wood stoves outside and piping in the smoke only. Of course smoke in itself is hot too.

But we never got that far, as we have to run the AC in the smokehouse even in Feb to get the sausage finished.

I have a LOT to have to reverse my brain about soon... worry about smokehouse freezing, Not overheating...

Figuring out what all to add to the power stroke for winter weather... IE has a plug in for cold temps here, but probably need other heaters like battery and such put in and so on..
Bumper for snow blade etc...

Too much to fathom at the moment.

Then will come the first problem. How the hell do I catch all these fish. I"m just a cat fishing person mostly. Little bass thrown in now and then. Have figured out grayling though, cause they are numbers and stupid we figure....

Decided to go to my Nephew's wood working shop and let him quarter my Alder. He decided a very big sliding compound miter saw would work best. Got it done is short order. Now I need to find my draw knife to rid the wood of it's bark.

Hot smoking (smoking/cooking) allows much more flexibility than “cold” smoking. The process even varies just within the state of Alaska since conditions vary a lot. I’ve heard of people from out on the coast - where it may vary between 40s at night upward of 70 during the day with plenty of breeze - and trying to dry and smoke fish where it is both warmer and nearly calm much of the time. They often lose a lot of product or get a very poor outcome. Soured or rancid fish isn’t much good. Neithetr is it fun to deal with flies. We’ve always had our best and easiest outcomes in June when temps are cool, there’s good breeze, and July’s warmer damper days don’t create challenges.

I believe I’d simply go straight to a hot smoke method if my temps are already upwardly-Texan. 😄

Really nice here. 95 just past sunset.....thankful that I didn't have to put full fire gear on, afraid it was a house on fire with black smoke. Thank GOD it was a guy burning a pile with a few tires in it when we arrived. Nothing like bunker gear and HOT bottled breathing air...